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32 Robert E. Doud
name churches after these holy
people. Many others have been
exceptionally holy without ever
having been named as saints.
I always enjoy hearing the
epistles read in church, especially
when St Paul mentions his
travelling companions. Today, it
was Sosthenes. I often leave
church thinking about these
associates of St Paul. I am sure
Sosthenes is a saint, although
he was never canonized. Then,
I think of Sylvanus, Timothy,
Barnabas, Silas, Onesimus, John
Mark and Philemon. If they were
partners in the gospel with Paul,
it is highly unlikely that they
failed to become saints.
All Saints’ Day, by Johann König, 1599
I think that the early Church
stressed martyrdom too much. Of course, when we had so many martyrs,
they would take priority in becoming saints. At some point in church
history, however, with fewer martyrs around, monks and nuns started to
be canonized. By now, there may be too many canonized religious and
too few lay and married saints. We need role models for ordinary people
today who are not called to die for their faith but to live it.
Making Saints
To explore and to understand the idea of sainthood is to seek after the
idea of holiness itself. 5 The Church is there to make people holy. To probe
the nature of sainthood or holiness is to probe the nature of the Church.
Canonized saints are exemplary people who show that the Church has
done its job well. Saints show the Church to be the People of God, a
pilgrim people, the Communion of Saints and the Body of Christ. The
Roman Catholic Church’s process of canonizing saints, while generally
taken by Catholics to be inspired by God, may seem to be flawed in
5
Rahner, ‘Holiness, Human’, Theological Dictionary, 207–208: ‘Human holiness is an absolute surrender to
the God of eternal life as he is in himself’.